January 2017

September 2008

September 28, 2008

The sister of a woman brutally murdered in Co Louth three and a half years ago has offered a £10,000 reward for information about the killing.

Mother-of-three Irene White (43) was stabbed to death in the kitchen of her Dundalk home on Wednesday April 6 2005. She was last seen dropping her children off to Realt Na Mara primary school that morning.

But just a few hours later,at about 12.30pm, Mrs White’s 70-year-old mother, Maureen McBride, found her lying in a pool of blood on the kitchen floor of her home at Ice House on Demesne Road.

Gardai found that a man in his thirties was seen running from Mrs White’s home around 10.15am that day. However, no-one has ever been convicted of her murder.

Her sister Anne Delcassian said she can still remember receiving the phone call to say Irene had been killed.

"I thought it was my mother but then they said to me ‘It’s Irene’," she said.

"It was the worst. I loved my sister dearly."

Mrs Delcassian is offering her own money on top of 10,000 Euro already offered by

Crimestoppers for information leading to the arrest and conviction of anyone involved in the murder.

Irene’s murder was so savage, she said.

Her throat was slit and she was stabbed 30 times in her upper body.

Her eyes were open when my mother found her.

Six months later, in October 2005, Mrs McBride died on what would have been Irene’s 44th birthday.

I think Irene was basically targeted to be killed, Mrs Delcassian said.

They knew when she was coming back from school.

Mrs Delcassian, whose grandmother Ellen Small came from the Falls Road in Belfast, said her family had been shocked by Irene’s death.

It wasn’t just me. A lot of Irene’s friends in Dundalk and Newry were devastated, she said.

She was my only sister. It’s taken me three-and-a-half years to accept that she and my mother are not coming back.

I cannot let her or my mother down. I think anyone would be the same. Mrs Delcassian, who has two daughters of her own, lives in Cheshire, England, but returns to Ireland frequently to get updates on the case.

She has spent the last three and a half years campaigning on behalf of her sister and other women who have been murdered in Ireland, these include Frenchwoman Sophie Toscan du Plantier, who was savagely killed at her home in west Cork in 1996.

She said she was convinced some people know who was involved in her sister’s killing.

I know there are people out there who have this information, she said.

Maybe they are in fear of their lives but there may just be someone who knows something and has a conscience.